


Will you love me?

by oOAchilliaOo



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 13:14:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13682406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oOAchilliaOo/pseuds/oOAchilliaOo
Summary: She always wondered if he would love her no matter what. One day, a long time ago, she’d asked him and he’d told her that he would, always.But apparently he didn't mean it.Or did he?





	Will you love me?

Now that she was finally still, the blood pounding in her ears was much harder to ignore. The sensation itself was not unusual, nor was the synchronised hard, harsh beating of her heart.

It was just… she was usually being actively shot at when she experienced these things.

He hadn’t shot her. Not physically, anyway. Even though, in many ways, what he’d said was far more hurtful, far more complicated than a bullet.

She’d much rather he’d shot her.

Shouting at TIM would help, _would_ ’ _ve_ helped if she could’ve managed it without jeopardizing her ship and her crew and her mission. The few sarcastic comments she’d managed to slip in were a poor consolation for the full wrath filled tirade he so deserved.

She should have gone to the gym afterwards. Even if, by ‘gym’, she really only meant the corner of the shuttle bay where she and Jacob had stashed some weights. Somehow, for all Cerberus had claimed they’d ‘upgraded’ her ship, it seemed a fully working gym hadn’t been particularly high on their agenda.

But instead she’d ended up here, in her cabin, slumped in her chair, staring at his picture on her desk with her heartbeat thrumming in her ears while she vaguely wondered why it felt so much like a betrayal.

It wasn’t like she could hold him to a promise made two years ago. Two years was a long time… at least, it had been for him. Apparently, _she’d_ spent the last two years sleeping.  

As a consequence, the memory was crystal clear…

*

“Do you think you’ll always love me?” she’d asked, somehow able to sense his surprised amusement despite the fact that she’d been far too sated and boneless to bother looking at him.

“Um … what?”

She’d smiled to herself. They’d been in her cabin at some goddamn ridiculous hour of the morning, or possibly evening, she hadn’t exactly been looking at a clock. Their duty shift had been due to start in a matter of far-too-few hours and, though neither of them had had the requisite amount of sleep, neither of them had cared. Her bed, though larger than the crew bunks, had been really too small for the two of them. They’d overcome that challenge by making good and improper use of the table, desk, chairs, and virtually every other surface in the room.

But, after, there had always been that moment. That moment when they would collapse, exhausted, onto her bed, always half on-top of each other, always naked and always somehow managing to tangle the single sheet around both of themselves.

It had always been too cramped, too sticky and too hot.

She wouldn’t have changed it for the galaxy.

“Do you think you’ll always love me?” she’d repeated, smiling to herself as she’d debated moving in order to see that adorably confused expression cross his face. It would have no doubt been worth it, but possibly (probably) not worth the trouble of moving.

“What do you mean?”

The caution in his tone had made her realise just how very… _permanent_ her question sounded. Not that she hadn’t wanted permanency. Every day she had become more certain that if everyone in the universe had only ‘one great love’, then he was probably hers.  

But that didn’t mean she had been ready to like… propose or something.

“I mean like…” She’d paused, casting about in her mind for the right words to express just what she meant. “What if I made a bad call, and an innocent bystander died? Would you still love me?”

She’d physically felt his muscles relax under her, enjoyed the small but perceptible tightening of his arm around her waist.

“Of course,” he’d mumbled into her hair.

And yet she hadn’t been _quite_ satisfied.

“Okay.”

She’d drawn the sheet about her and rolled over to prop herself up on his chest. The matted tangled mess that was her hair had immediately fallen into her eyes and she’d scraped it away with an impatient palm. Then his hand had been there, rising to take the place of her own and, with a far gentler and more precise touch than hers, he’d patiently begun unravelling the mess. She hadn’t been able to help but smile and lean forward just enough to press her lips against his in a soft kiss.

“Okay,” she’d repeated, determined to make her point. “What if I disobeyed a direct order from the Alliance? Would you still love me?”

The expression he’d shot her in response was part-confusion, part-amusement, like she was playing some game and he wasn’t quite sure of the rules.

“I think stealing the Normandy answers that,” he’d said, dark eyes twinkling. “Don’t you?”

She’d had to admit he made a good point.

“What if you didn’t agree? What if you thought I was wrong and the Alliance was right? Would you still love me?”

“Of course.” His reply had been instant. “I might not _follow_ you, but I will always, always _love_ you.”

He’d thought about this before. He had to have had; Kaidan Alenko didn’t give answers with that much certainty unless he’d thought about it. Thought long and hard, most likely.

Yet somehow she _still_ hadn’t been _quite_ satisfied.

“But what if-“

“Shepard,” he’d interrupted, his eyes serious but his expression amused. “Believe me, I can’t conceive of a universe where I don’t love you. I can’t promise that it’ll always be easy, or that we will always agree, but I can promise that through it all I will love you. Okay?”

She’d relented after that. The sweet sincerity in his eyes and his tone, the fact that he hadn’t questioned where all this was coming from, either because he didn’t care or because he knew she hadn’t been completely sure herself, had been more than enough to convince her.

*

At least, it had back then. Now…

_‘I loved you.’_

That’s what he’d said to her today; two years later for him, two months later for her.

Lov _ed,_ past tense.

It was a shame really, she thought now, that then she hadn’t thought to ask, “What if I die, get resurrected by terrorists, decide not to contact you to tell you I’m alive and then greet you with possibly the eight _stupidest_ words I could say?”

Put that way, she supposed his reaction to seeing her was understandable…  In fact, she’d go so far as to say it was downright _reasonable_. She was lucky he hadn’t punched her.

(If their positions were reversed she’d have certainly punched him.)

In her defence, it wasn’t like she’d been thinking clearly. She’s already a little fuzzy on the details but from what she can remember her brain had been suffering from a maelstrom of emotions. Part shock, part surprise, part relief that he hadn’t been on the Collector ship, part concern at the realisation that Miranda was a handful of paces behind her and somehow she _had_ to prevent Cerberus from finding out just how important he was to her…

…and yeah, maybe just five percent noticing the fact that command suited him well, and that maybe her memory wasn’t what it had been or perhaps the fact that she’d been missing him so terribly had been in play, but _dear god_ how was he so much more handsome than she remembered?

In hindsight, not a particularly great combination of thoughts and feelings.

There were certainly better things to have said, that was for _damn_ sure. She wasn’t usually one for regret, but… if she had the chance, she’d readily change almost everything that had happened planet-side.

She hoped that the same was true for him. Once upon a time she would’ve _known._ Once upon a time she would have been able to look into his eyes and know whether he meant it, and if he didn’t, then she’d be able to figure out what he _did_ mean.

But this time when she looked into his eyes, there was something stopping her, an impenetrable wall that guarded his innermost thoughts. She’d actually been just a little bit impressed; it seemed that his wall had gotten almost as good as her own.

_Almost._ He couldn’t quite hide the pain, the betrayal. _That_ she’d been able to see, and she still wasn’t sure whether it was a blessing or a curse.

And this train of thought wasn’t doing her, her ship or her mission _any_ good. God, was she seriously sitting in her office moping over a _man?_ Sure, he was a very handsome, very special, highly intelligent man. But he was still a _man_. There were probably a hundred other things she could have been doing.

Stopping the Collectors for example.

Right on cue her terminal pinged. It was probably another snot-a-gram from the Illusive Man. One of those ‘I don’t approve of your actions but you have free rein to do things your way on this mission, no really’ messages. She hated them, hated him, especially now.

But getting righteously angry about one of his annoying emails beat wallowing in regret. So, she pulled her boots off the desk, letting them hit the deck with a satisfying thud, and scooted her chair closer to the terminal.

As she activated it, she was already preparing her tirade; stacking up the reasons that placed her on the moral high ground, ready to let all loose at Timmy-Boy in the privacy of her own head.

But the moment she activated her terminal, all her anger melted. 

Because this message wasn’t from the Illusive Man.

It was from him.

_Shepard,_

_I’m sorry for what I said back on Horizon…_


End file.
